European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, I find myself in a very difficult position. I have been in your Lordships’ House for 56 years and I have never found such an impressive audience at this time of the evening. I am therefore wondering why I am here, and what I might be able to do to help. I was asked to say something on the financing of trade as we need to develop it across the world. I was, for quite a while, chairman of the British Exporters Association. Most of my life has been the financing of trade, usually against good orders. As we sit here tonight, with Britain in Europe at the moment, 37% of service exports and 48% of goods exports go from here to the continent of Europe. That is more than I thought, and £380 billion UK imports are from Europe, compared with only £243 billion from the rest of the world. Some 2.9 million EU citizens live in the UK, 1.2 million UK nationals live in the EU and 40% of foreign direct investment comes from the EU.

So what is our duty as Britain in Europe? What can our Government do to help? We know that through the financial institutions and through our export associations, the finance is normally available for all worthwhile projects. We know too that, for the first time in many years, the relationship between the departments of trade and industry and other departments is pretty good. One can pick up the phone, ring and, instead of being passed to someone else, get instant help. What can we do at this time?

We have people worrying about the continent of Europe and what will happen. Yet we have a significant position within all aspects of trade. Money is only a commodity these days—it is a method of communication. This is the first time in my banking years that I find when you pick up the phone and ask if someone might be interested in something, the voice at the other end of the phone jumps down the line and says, “Yes, I would be”. In financing the development of trade and overseas investment, there appears to be no shortage of money. There is no difficulty in currency and, although to some extent in the past, language created problems, it seems that the spread of the English language on the telephone is greater than it is in real life; you get a wonderful response.

I feel confident that we are in a strong position. The questions are: who is in charge and what are we trying to do? I am not sure who is in charge at the moment. This place in the evening, when you have 700 or 800 people, is quite an interesting environment in which to get tired. I do not think the Government or Parliament can do much more to help. If anyone has any ideas, I would like to open up your Lordships’ House for a debate on a particular subject with questions that noble Lords might like to pose. I could certainly arrange for them to be answered. That is probably the best contribution I can make, other than to give you an order for anything for which you would like an order.

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Friday 3rd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, I suppose that I should say that I am among my Peers but I am not quite sure why I am here. It all happened one day when I was working in Brussels and someone came up and tapped me on the shoulder and said, “My Lord, could I have a word?” I said, “I’m not my Lord, I’m just me”. He said, “I’m afraid I’ve got some news for you. Your father died off the Azores this morning at sea and has been buried. You are now Lord Selsdon”. It was quite a shock. I was young, I had not met many Lords and I did not know what they did. I waited, thinking that someone would write to me—but no. But then I was grabbed one day by the Leader of the House, who said, “You haven’t taken your seat”. I did not know what taking my seat was, because I had never been trained; there was no briefing. So it was into that rather nervous background that I came to your Lordships’ House.

I have been drip-fed by geriatrics over a long period of time—30 years—and the knowledge that I have gained is enormous. I cannot determine, because I have never been able to vote—I was too young to vote. All I can say is, “You get the Government that you deserve”. So here we are now with people looking at the great reform.

Something that I thought I would do was to see how one could learn about the House and the quality of the people in it. So we set up a programme with students to ask if people would like copies of their speeches bound up in red vellum to show to their children and grandchildren thereafter. Surprisingly enough, a lot of people took that up; during the summer season we took young students, shoved them in the Library and gave them a laptop and said, “Will you do the search for this?”. What I realised was that the House did not know very much about itself, let alone very much about the individuals—unless they had been together in the Commons. So we did these analyses and then it was suggested that people might like copies of their speeches, if we could get students to come in the summer and put them together. That took place—we called it Excalibur, like getting a sword out of a stone.

All this time I have been extremely grateful for the knowledge that I have gained. I have been treated kindly by even the most extreme people from Governments around the world, because in the world in which I worked I was young enough to be expendable and therefore spent an awful lot of my time in countries that nobody thought you should ever go to, such as different parts of the Middle East or Africa.

As I sit—or rather stand—here in my later years, I have been looking to see who the key players are, and I have suddenly realised that the problem that we are facing is that someone has shoved an awful lot more people into this place and into the other place than one would have thought was suitable when they are untrained. I am not objecting to the power of the Prime Minister to be able to nominate people, but it would be nice if we knew who they were, and the reasons behind it.

As I sit down, I say that I think we have got somewhere today. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I am not sure that I can put names to faces any more. We never used Christian names—or given names, as they are sometimes called—in order that you did not have to know whether the father was dead or not. I do not want to waste noble Lords’ time. I am shoved at the bottom because I am expendable—but I thought that we would finish easily before 1 pm so that everyone could have their lunch.

House of Lords Bill [HL]

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 21st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, I have been here for only 50 years or so. We have six Members who have been here for more than 50 years. It is a remarkable institution that I thoroughly enjoy. The question here is about age and length of service. I have details of every single Peer who has served in this House, and our weakness at the moment lies in the number of new entrants who are untrained and inexperienced. As I say, six of us have been here for more than 50 years, 23 for between 40 and 50 years and 30 for 40 to 45 years; those are long years of service and they mean that we have quite a remarkable knowledge base.

I am an elected hereditary Peer who was one of those who fought hard to be elected when my noble friend Lord Strathclyde was trying to do something else at that point. Since then we have found that the elected hereditary Peers have the highest level of attendance and the greatest amount of participation in the House. The problem above all others is that we do not know each other. I have before me details of the length of service and details of every Peer. For fun we had an exercise whereby it might be nice to reward people for their service by binding up copies of their speeches in red vellum as memorial gifts for their long service. My noble friend Lord Carrington is our longest-serving Member, followed by my noble friend Lord Denham, and this great expertise and knowledge, if we can call them that, need to be understood. However, we do not know who we are. It is extraordinarily difficult to put names to the faces one sees in the House. I was sitting quietly and looking to see who I knew as several Peers came through the door. I found that the only way to get to know anybody these days is to ask the doorkeepers. How they have that ability to remember everyone, I do not know.

The question, therefore, is: if we look at length of service, do we ask people to retire because of age, or do we ask that they should retire because they have not performed? Performance is probably one issue to look at. I have all the figures for those who have not attended at all and for those who have attended only once or twice. But whoever people are, and whether they attend or not, they cost money and organisation.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I did not intend to intervene again in this debate if I could avoid it, but I would like my noble friend to tell us, rather than for me to hear afterwards, how much somebody who never attends costs the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I am afraid that is beyond my pay grade.

The facilities of the House are designed to accommodate a whole range of people. If one wants to see attendances, we have figures for them. It is not just attendance in the sense of walking in and out of the door and claiming one’s allowance that counts, it is people’s participation. There should perhaps be a requirement to invite people to participate. Having been in the research world for many years, I can say that I have learned more by being drip-fed in this place than in any other institution that I have come across. The difficulty I find is that I am not very good at putting names to faces. Therefore, when I look at someone, I am not sure who they are or what their background is. However, we now have quite a good internet facility for everybody and if anybody would like details or information, I would be happy to provide them. I have in my hand figures for the length of service of everybody. I have great respect for this and for the noble Lord, Lord Elton.

So my simple question is: what do we do next? I am not sure, but if your Lordships would like to share some of the data that I have, I would willingly pass them on. They are quite interesting and provide confirmation that we have probably the greatest institution in terms of concentration of knowledge and experience in the world.

Commonwealth and Commonwealth Charter

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I should declare that I suppose I am, by accident, what might be defined as a child of the Commonwealth. When I first came back with my sister from Canada, where we were left during the war, we were introduced to our family, my mother in particular. Most of her family were called Williams, a lovely patronymic surname that I have always admired. More than that, for family bonding we went on holiday for the first time, which was quite difficult when there was no petrol around, to Mumbles. I therefore have a great affection for the current position of—I must get this right, because my noble friend Lord Howell, got it wrong—the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams. That was my most difficult research before speaking today. I am most grateful to him for a debate that he introduced some time ago on the importance and effect of religion in the Middle East, which touched me deeply.

As a child of the Commonwealth, and knowing that there is so little time left, one must always have a theme. I will take the theme of a minute. A minute is, as noble Lords know, one nautical mile upon the surface of the earth. Therefore, when I look down from heaven or up from wherever it might be, what do I see? Seventy per cent of the earth is ocean or sea. The land is only a very small percentage. It is spread far and wide, and you either look down on it from above the Antarctic, the Arctic or the equator, but, in general, when you look down upon it, the map that you see has Greenwich, which is in the United Kingdom, in the centre, as it should be, due to the technology of the Harrison chronometer. It matters not, but technology was what enabled us to go out into the world.

This degree and this 70% water become important to me because, by some strange calculation, it seems that the United Kingdom, its British territories and the other main Commonwealth countries are the most dominant with their economic exclusion zones of 200 nautical miles controlling the oceans of the world, where there are 22,000 shipping vessels and others. In comparison, the United States has 6.2 million square kilometres against our 27 million square kilometres. The rest of NATO has 4.5 million square kilometres, but the French territories become quite important with 7.7 million square kilometres. Does this mean anything? Possibly it does not, but it can do strategically and if we look at such issues as global warming or trade. If we say that 90% of all trade goes by sea, of the 100,000 vessels upon the face of the earth, 20% are Commonwealth and 20% are fishing vessels. This may be utterly irrelevant to this debate, but to me it is relevant because I want to move on to look at climate change.

I had the privilege to go to a presentation the other day about the Arctic and I got something of a shock. With global warming before very long the north-west passage will be open, which means that the great ships of the world will be moving there in five days rather than eight, with enormous fuel savings. It means that the whole structure of Europe and the United Kingdom may change, and perhaps even Scapa Flow will come back into being.

On the impact of that change and the changes that are taking place in the southern hemisphere, we can talk about Antarctica, which, as a result of the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Montgomery, is well protected and does not belong to anyone, although the greatest claimants are, as your Lordships know, always those who play rugby—I do not know about Papua New Guinea. I do not know what that link is, but it is there. Let us suppose global warning continues. At the presentation I went to, some eminent government scientists pointed out that flooding as a result of climate change could have a major impact on India and many other Commonwealth countries, and that we should be aware that it is not that far away. This is all way beyond my pay grade, but as secretary and treasurer of the House of Lords Yacht Club, it gives me great pleasure to know that floating upon the face of the earth are more British vessels than vessels of any other country, and they are Commonwealth-flagged. We must therefore ask: what is the Commonwealth flag and what does it stand for? Even in today’s debate, we have different opinions. I believe that trade is the bearer of all wealth, knowledge and understanding.

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Friday 10th February 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Selsdon]

312: In the Title, line 2, after “creation” insert “and continuation”

[Lord Selsdon]

Perhaps I may ask for clarification as regards the Long Title. One of the amendments I proposed earlier was that those of us who had been elected would be known as “elected hereditary Peers” rather than “excepted hereditary Peers”. I am in a slight muddle about the Long Title and I wonder whether I can have some clarification.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, the short answer is no.

[Lord Selsdon]

I therefore feel slightly confused by the Long Title as regards where it says “hereditary peerage” and we still have the election process in place. If it is correct, I have no objection.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

Is the noble Lord moving an amendment?

[Lord Selsdon]

Yes, I was moving an amendment but I was asking for clarification. I apologise for that. Can anyone in the House give me some clarification?

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, my noble friend raises an important point. I think that the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, goes some way to give the clarification which he requires. If he is still confused—some of us may be—let us talk about it at Third Reading.

[Lord Selsdon]

It is the simple matter that if the Long Title is wrong, it is wrong. Is it wrong or is it right?

[Lord Trefgarne]

It is right now.

[Lord Selsdon]

It is right. That is all I need to know. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 312 withdrawn.